ACT appealed for the state’s decision
to use the SAT for the college entrance portion of the high school test, and as
expected, lost the appeal. Next week the contract is expected to return to the
Administrative Board and is likely to be approved.
ACT officials appealed based on the
argument that the state changed the request for proposals (RFP) without a
notice to the bidders, and that the state had wrongly deducted points for their
inclusion of a writing assessment. Chief procurement officer for Michigan Jeff
Brownlee argued that both College Board (SAT) and ACT officials were given
additional time to revise their pricing to meet the compliances of the RFP. Mr.
Brownlee also commented that ACT had points appropriately deducted because the
writing assessment is considered an enhancement to the test, where the RFP had
requested off-the-shelf testing products.
ACT also put in a request for an
appeal, dependent on their response from a Freedom of Information Act request;
however Mr. Brownlee has preemptively rejected this stating that the Freedom of
Information Act is not intended to assist in the RFP process.